It is now common for an individual to regularly use multiple computers from multiple different locations. A typical user may have a first computer at the office and a second computer at home, for example, as well as a portable computer, and a web-enabled mobile device such as a smartphone. To have ready access to the user's content, it is desirable for the user to share his files between these multiple computers.
One way to share files between these multiple computers is to manually transfer the files from one to the other—for example, a user may e-mail himself a copy of a file he is working on before leaving the office, so that he can resume working on it later from home. If the user forgets to e-mail or bring the file home with him, he must either go back to the office to retrieve it, or perhaps simply wait until the next day. Alternatively the user can attempt to remotely access to his work computer, for example using a virtual private network (VPN) to access a corporate network from a remote location, but only if such access is authorized. However, if the user is accessing the document remotely and loses his connection, he may lose his changes, be unable to continue, and may end up with a corrupted document.
Another attempt to solve this problem has involved the use of network storage devices, whereby services offer users the opportunity to store their documents “in the cloud”—that is, on servers accessible to users via the Internet or other network. In the above example, a user who is interested in working on a document from multiple locations can store the document on a network file server and then edit it from home, work, or any other location that provides network access to the file server.